Why Duffy will be stuffing more stockings than Dido or Metallica

Brian Boydon music

Welcome to Q4, the three busiest retail months of the year. Not only are more albums sold in October, November and December than in the other nine months put together, but sales in December alone can be bigger than the previous 11 months put together.

Little surprise, then, that you won't be able to move over the next few months without some mega-act releasing a new "must have" album. The TV and radio ads for these blockbusters are already in full swing, as are print and online media - not to mention the bus shelter and the whole length of the bus itself.

To give you some idea of how strong the marketplace will now become, consider that the Warner label was preparing a Madonna Greatest Hits collection, which would surely sell in the millions.

Madonna's contract with Warner is now up (she's moving to Live Nation), and it's traditional that labels cash in on such a departure by releasing a Greatest Hits. But Warner took one look at the release schedules for the next few months and cautiously chose to put Madonna back to NYQ1 (that's January/February/March 2009 to you).

What was Warner so scared of? New albums by Oasis, Metallica, AC/DC, Razorlight, Beyoncé, Dido, Snow Patrol, Kaiser Chiefs, Pink, Take That, Sugababes and Girls Aloud. Also huge-selling best ofs from Katie Melua and Eva Cassidy, as well as a slew of re-mastered/ repackaged/previously unreleased material works from The Clash and The Smiths.

Franz Ferdinand were also supposed to release a new album. But they, too, apparently took a look at the schedules and decided to wait for the calmer waters of NYQ1.

Given that December is the biggest cash-till month, you might think yourself hard-pressed to guess which albums will sell the most copies during that month. I'll now tell you which one I think it will be, and why. It's none of the above; in fact, it was released back in March: Duffy's Rockferry.

The reason has to do with Amy Winehouse, whose Back to Blackdebuted in 2006. It was a slow burner that still had plenty of legs during 2007. To give it an extra push for last year's Christmas market (even though by now most people who were going to buy it already had) Amy's label brought out a special edition, which was the original disc plus a second one with various B-sides, rare tracks and live versions. Crucially, it also contained Winehouse's Mark Ronson-produced cover of The Zuton's Valerie, which had been a massive radio hit.

From December 1st 2007, both editions of Back to Blackwere available in shops at the same time. The special edition sold three times as many copies of the original.

Rockferryhas already sold very strongly (and reached No 4 in the US Billboardcharts). Duffy's label, Universal, will shortly give the album the special edition makeover treatment. Nobody will talk about what sort of bonus content she's got up her sleeve, but the rumours are it really is something special enough to persuade those who have already bought Rockferryto go out and buy it again.

The music industry loves these special editions. There are no studio costs, and most of the promotion has already been done for them. Accordingly, the profit margin is potentially massive.

Which is probably why the major labels recently leaned on the chart companies to relax their rules about special editions. Previously, different versions of the same album were kept separate in the charts.

Now, provided that 100 per cent of the original album is included in the special edition, the artist will be able to get one chart placing for all versions of the work.